pet peeve

It bugs me when people in relationships say that they don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day because they show their love for each other every day. It seems like a logical fallacy, because the fact that you treat every day together like it’s special doesn’t mean that Valentine’s Day can’t also be special. Plus it can seem a little smug. 

I told Austin this and he said “Maybe it’s time you start studying for the GRE.”  

Things that I have done today that are outside my comfort zone

• Doing one activity-based budget and one budget for a no-cost extension  
• Buying screws and plastic anchors to adhere my Ikea coat rack on the wall  
• Using Chipotle hacks to maximize my burrito size (for someone who orders the exact same thing every time, this qualifies as daring)   
• Writing a silly blog post about my everyday life

This post started with complaining over text message about how harrrrd everything is. I spent all day at work doing stuff that I sort of but don't totally understand how to do, and a huge volume of it all at once, and worked late into the evening at it. On the way home, I stopped at the hardware store for supplies for my “put furniture in the house and also have a place to put your clothes” efforts, which I swore I'd finish by the end of November and have therefore been consuming decent chunks of my evenings and weekends. Between a busy week at work and trying to get the apartment together in the evenings, I’m tired.

Austin and I were talking the other night about how adulthood seems to be a succession of doing things for the first time and figuring them out – which can feel like a constant uphill slog – and that hit me again in line while texting at Chipotle. And then the phrase "outside my comfort zone" popped into my head. 

Because really, that's exactly what all this harrrrrd adulting stuff is. Everyone, especially inspiration-minded twenty-something bloggers, loves talking about how important it is to push yourself outside your comfort zone, how that’s where the growth and magic happen. And I totally believe that. I even decided “grow in place” would be my phrase for 2013. 

“Leaving your comfort zone” usually conjures images of quit-your-job-and-buy-a-one-way-ticket travel, or getting comfortable with public speaking and blind dates, or various other colorful, random hijinks. I’ve been thinking of “growing in place” as the fun extracurricular activities that complement my day job – growing my first garden, looking for challenging extracurricular activities, maybe trying roller derby if I can get up the nerve for it.

But today I realized that the sometimes-mundane stuff of daily life can be just as life-enriching as the sexier stuff that populate everyone’s “25 by 25” lists, mine included. My work isn’t always thrilling, but it’s often challenging, falling into that sweet spot of being not-impossible but still a little outside the realm of what’s easy for me, and I’m growing as a professional as a result. As much as I wish I could have spent my November evenings on underwater basket weaving instead of constructing Ikea furniture and scouring Craigslist for a couch, I’ve been learning new things and getting a little more competent every day. (I had no idea until recently that you can have a bed with just a mattress, a box spring and a frame.) And “working hard” is outside everyone’s comfort zone – no matter how many hours we’re used to working, we’d probably all rather be watching Netflix. 

So this lovely, Pinteresty idea of “outside your comfort zone,” in practice, often feels like being stressed and confused and frustrated with tasks that seem mundane. Within the comfort zone of working and living in DC, there are plenty of opportunities to learn and grow on an everyday basis, not just when I decide to check off a bucket list item. 

 So here’s to being stretched, challenged, and sometimes a little overwhelmed in daily life.  That just might be where the magic happens.

Career Advice from Gertrude Bell

I just wrapped up what may be the first biography I’ve ever read for fun – I usually stick to literature and travel anthologies – on the life of Gertrude Bell, the lady traveler and TE Lawrence counterpart who helped form British policy during WWI and shape modern Iraq. It wasn’t perfect; the author mostly communicated Gertrude’s assessments on the Middle East of that era without a particularly critical eye or much historical analysis about how the stage was set for Iraq’s future conflicts.

But I see why people read biographies now. It was fascinating to read about her exploits and to glean some lessons for future exploits of my own. So below, my top career advice from that most daring of Victorian lady adventurers.

1. Most of what Gertrude chose to do (with the exception of some misadventures) was genuinely fun for her. Whether she was on an archaeological dig or traveling through the desert, her letters home consistently say that she’s having the time of her life, that it’s all quite a lark. She didn’t travel because she wanted awesome pictures for her blog – though she did clearly enjoy the attention it earned her at parties. Nor did she take herself too seriously – when she becomes the first female staff officer in the history of British military intelligence, she considers it quite “comic.”

Lesson: What’s fun need not correspond to what’s prestigious, just to challenging work that you get a kick out of on one level or another. There’s no point in seeking after achievements that don’t genuinely make you happy along the way.

2. The most valuable knowledge comes from people. Gertrude was able to supply relevant knowledge to the British government—and to contribute to mapping the tribes and debating whether to orchestrate an Arab revolt in the Cairo office—because of the relationships she had developed with various tribal sheikhs during her travels. And she had the ear of the British government in the first place because she had friends and society connections in the foreign ministry. She was well-read and well-educated—she read Hebrew for a fun break while studying Arabic —but her real knowledge came from her relationships.

Lesson: Ironically enough, this WWI-era story reinforced to me the importance of networking. This is something I’m definitely still working on. Book-learning suits me, and like most type-A folks, I hated group projects in school, but the working world is kind of like one giant group project.

3. She had doubts. In retrospect, her life looks perfectly designed, her mountaineering in Europe equipping her with skills to caravan through the desert, which equipped her with the knowledge to help shape British strategy in the Middle East during and after the war. During a risky trip to Hayyil, where she was held captive by the Rashid family, Gertrude frequently fretted that it was all an expensive and exhausting waste of time – but it was on that trip that she gained some of her most valuable insights into the region.

Lesson: You can be uncertain about what you’re doing with your career and your life, and it can still turn out awesome. You don’t have to know exactly where you want to end up as long as you’re moving in the direction of what fascinates you.